


I Guess I'll Have to Change My Plan

by Smittywing (Smitty)



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-14
Updated: 2010-02-14
Packaged: 2017-10-07 07:21:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/62773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smitty/pseuds/Smittywing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The last thing David Rossi thought before he closed his eyes was that he really needed to get Emily Prentiss a boyfriend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Guess I'll Have to Change My Plan

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to [](http://www.livejournal.com/users/wojelah/profile)[**wojelah**](http://www.livejournal.com/users/wojelah/) for reading, betaing, cheering, and putting up with my drama queen bullshit. Thanks also to [](http://www.livejournal.com/users/mingsmommy/profile)[**mingsmommy**](http://www.livejournal.com/users/mingsmommy/) and [](http://www.livejournal.com/users/smacky30/profile)[**smacky30**](http://www.livejournal.com/users/smacky30/) for their endless cheering and support. If there is a sequel with pancakes, it will be due entirely to their strength of will.

"You," Morgan said, pointing a shot glass at Emily, "are scary."

"What?" she asked, arranging her empties in a neat little row. "Just because I'm kicking your pathetic ass? I didn't know that scared you so much."

On Morgan's side of the table, Reid pursed his lips and glanced over at JJ with raised eyebrows. Dave grinned into his Scotch and cast Aaron a sidelong glance. Aaron, predictably, looked wary.

"All right," Morgan said. He gestured to the waitress. "Set us up again." He glanced around the table. "Anyone else?"

"Ha, no," JJ said, holding up her bottle of beer as if to ward them off. "But you two go ahead. I can't wait to hear the stories tomorrow."

Dave nudged Aaron, but Aaron shook his head. "Thanks," he said. "But I haven't done shots in so long, I'd probably end up giving myself alcohol poisoning."

"Rossi?" Emily asked. "You want to go a round with us?"

Dave was about to say no, but something seized him, some spirit of youth and daring that he probably should have put to bed years ago, and he said, "Sure, count me in."

"Oh, yeah," Morgan crowed. "The old man's going to show us how it was done in the glory days."

Dave wasn't certain his first go-round with the BAU really counted as the glory days - working in a bunker _sans_ Gulfstream, media liaison, or Emily Prentiss hardly compared to what the BAU had to offer these days. _That's not enitrely true_, he reminded himself. Katie Cole had been pretty and eager and determined. Emily reminded him a bit of Katie when she had been young. Before Katie had become a brass-balled bitch, and Dave had told her so. She probably still thought he hated her, which wasn't true. He _liked_ a set of brass balls on a woman.

"All right, set 'em up," Emily said, interrupting his thoughts. The waitress was back with fresh shot glasses, half a dozen for each of them, and a bottle of vodka. They lined them up in rows - which was when Dave remembered why this might be a bad idea. The waitress filled the glasses with long, careless strokes of the bottle, vodka sloshing into each tiny cup and over the rim into the next.

"You ready to go down?" Morgan asked, fingers hovering over the glass on the end.

"Not to you," Emily said sweetly. She glanced over at Dave and winked. "Maybe to him."

And Dave couldn't help wondering if she was talking about competition or something else.

"Ready, set, go."

Back in the day, six shots of vodka would have been a chaser between work and a late, cold dinner. Tonight, they were cold little chunks of fire, racing down his throat to his stomach. The amount wasn't so bad, but the keeping pace with the kids was taking all he had.

Emily's final shot glass hit the table first.

"Again?" Morgan protested. Apparently second place didn't count and neither did third, because Morgan didn't call either and paid no mind when Dave put down his own last glass.

Emily shrugged. "I'm sorry," she said with false innocence, and finally, there it was, the slightest lisp on the _s_ that made Dave smile. "Weren't you...going down?"

The table groaned and Morgan winced good-naturedly. "Oh, honey," he said. "You just name the time and the place."

"Yeah," Emily said, wiping her bottom lip with her thumb. "I'll send you an engraved invitation."

"Mmm," Morgan said, "Shot down again."

"Don't worry," Dave told him, sliding out of his seat and smacking Morgan on the shoulder. "You'll learn someday."

He ambled to the restroom at the back of the bar, hearing his team rag on Morgan and the other man's supposed skills.

He took a piss and washed his hands. When he came out, Emily Prentiss was leaning against the wall outside the women's room.

"We going again?" he asked, lifting his eyebrows at her.

"No," she told him, pushing off the wall. "Reid and Hotch are talking about leaving - " She stopped and rolled her eyes. "Hotch is talking about leaving and Reid is taking the opportunity to escape. I just wanted to see if you were going to stick around for a while."

"Yeah," he said, figuring _why not?_ He probably would have left whenever Aaron did, as not to cast an air of supervision over the younger agents. Clearly no one was worried about an audience, though. And certainly weren't about to be after a dozen shots. "I'll be here. You okay?"

Emily was a tough girl and not hardly a lightweight, even if she was impossibly slender. Maybe it was because they were friends, partnered together more often than not, and he knew when there was something off. Something a little bit wrong. And he was getting that feeling now.

"I'm good," she said, sliding away and pulling open the door to the ladies room. "See you back at the table."

Back at the table, Aaron was pulling on his jacket and Reid was scrambling to follow.

"You won't stay just a little longer?" Dave asked Hotch.

Aaron shook his head. "I'd rather not," he said. "You should feel free to stay if you want."

"Just a little bit," Dave told him. "I want to make sure everyone's okay to get home."

"Good." Aaron nodded and clasped his shoulder, and then JJ was sliding out of the very back of the booth as well.

"Oh, don't leave," Emily said to her as she rejoined the table.

"I gotta get home to Henry," JJ said, airkissing in Emily's direction, and telling everyone else goodnight and to be safe.

Dave didn't miss the shadow that flitted past Emily's eyes when JJ mentioned her son.

"Tell me you guys aren't going too?" Emily asked, her eyes pleading with Morgan, Garcia, and that Kevin kid.

"I'm not going anywhere except maybe that dance floor," Morgan said, eyeing a tall, dark-haired woman rolling her hips in a way no man in the room was unaware of, Dave included.

"Dancing?" Kevin asked, hopping to his feet. "My lady?" He inclined his head and held out his hand to Garcia.

"I thought you'd never ask," Garcia said, grabbing his hand and pulling him after her. Morgan was more casual about it, rising fluidly to his feet and ambling out to the woman he'd been watching. Within seconds, his arm was around her waist and he was whispering in her ear.

_Player_, Dave thought affectionately, remembering when that had been him. He glanced across the table to Emily, who had effectively been abandoned there with him, and figured the kindest thing was to offer to be her vehicle of inclusion . "Would you like to dance?" he asked.

Emily shook her head. "I don't think that's a good idea," she said. A flush touched her cheeks and Dave wondered if that was from the alcohol or the idea of dancing with him.

"Do you want some water?" he asked, knowing she'd have a hell of a headache tomorrow if she didn't get hydrated.

"What I really want," she said, leaning her cheek into her hand, "is to find some guy who actually _will_ go down on me, all night long."

There's a sudden, awkward silence. Then Emily blushes and turns her face into her palm and says, "Oh, God. I'm so drunk. I'm so sorry."

Dave's dick, which hadn't been particularly concerned about the goings on in the bar before, was suddenly hard and attuned to everything even tangentially to do with Emily Prentiss. He wasn't sure what to do, what to say. His mind was rapidly providing him with images, ideas, fantasies. Emily's legs around his shoulders, around his head, his mouth on her, in her, the hot, rich taste of her, the squeeze of her inner muscles around his fingers, and the curve of her body as he made her come.

"I can, uh, poll the bar if you want," he offered finally, reminding himself that it wouldn't be appropriate to volunteer. "I know times change, but in my day no man alive would turn down that offer from a beautiful woman."

"Yeah, that's why they call them the good old days," Emily said. Her foot kicked at Dave's ankle under the table.

Dave missed a beat and then tapped her ankle with his own foot. "Hey," he said, feeling awkward and oddly achy for her. He'd accepted the failure of each of his marriages as collateral damage to the job - the first two, at least. The third was collateral damage to his ego, to be honest. But it wasn't right that Emily had to settle for the same. It wasn't right that she never even got to try.

Emily rolled her eyes and turned her head away, distracted by the dance floor. "Ignore me," she said. "I guess I get maudlin when I drink too much."

Dave followed her gaze to Morgan, who was wrapped so securely around his target for the night that it was pretty difficult to tell whose hands were where. He glanced at Emily's face, but she didn't seem jealous, just wistful. Not far away, Garcia and her young man were dancing without half the grace of the other couple, but the smiles on their faces were just as blissful.

"Come on," he said, standing up and walking around to her chair.

Emily looked up. "What are you - _Rossi_," she protested.

"We're going to dance, too," he told her, even as the jukebox, or whatever they were using, slid into the song from that Eminem movie.

David Rossi was not a terrible dancer. He wasn't precisely a _good_ dancer, but it all had to do with what women liked, and he knew his basic steps, he could count out a rhythm, and he could get a girl turned around a room without crashing her into anyone.

What he didn't know was how the hell to dance to this trash.

"Rossi," Emily protested again as he tugged her out of her seat and onto the dance floor. "Do you have any idea what you're doing?"

"Not precisely," he admitted, reeling her in and resting his hand on her back. "This isn't much of a foxtrot."

Emily laughed, her head tipping back. Dave found himself drawn to the long curve of her throat. "Okay, okay, hold on." She turned her hand in his and brought his arm around her waist to join the other. "You're so going to regret this," she warned him.

"Hey, hey," Morgan called from over his lady friend's head. "Look who's getting busy!"

Emily lifted her eyebrows in a sassy _I told you so_ and rolled her body from head to hips in a way that completely destroyed any progress Dave had made in feigning professionalism. _Oh, fuck_, he thought, looking down at the top of her head as she completed the circuit and twisted her way back up. Her breasts brushed lightly against his chest as she rolled her shoulders and Dave decided that he would like nothing more than to spread her out on the bar and do just what she'd requested back at the table.

"Shake it, Prentiss!" Morgan called. He raised his eyebrows at Dave and Dave, who was utterly failing to keep up with the beat, shrugged in self-defense.

Emily turned her head away from both of them. It was hard to tell in the dim light, but Dave thought she was blushing. She kept the twist of her hips moving with the intense beat of the music, but her movements were slightly subdued. "Come on," he said, because he'd committed to this. "Ignore the horndog over there and teach me."

Emily glanced up, then down again and settled her hands tentatively on Dave's shoulders. "You just - " She was definitely blushing and it was charming. Dave had never seen her blush before. " - move your body with the music, and with me and - I don't know," she said suddenly. "I'm not very good at this."

"You were good just now," Dave said in her ear, keeping his face turned away from Morgan. "Don't think so hard."

She moved her hands awkwardly from his shoulders to his sides, urging him close, and pulled him into the curve and roll and of her body. He didn't try to follow, didn't try to be good at it, just let himself be dragged along with her, to roll with her like he was making love to her, and he wondered if this is how it would be, with her leading. The music was stark and staccato, her fluid movements snapping into sharper points on the downbeat.

Dave wondered how kids today danced like this and seemed so unaffected. Was sex really that boring anymore? No wonder Emily was disillusioned.

Emily shifted, turning, and he paused, waiting for her next cue. She pressed her back up against her chest and rolled her hips and they were pressed so close -

"Oh," she said, freezing and reaching one hand back to rest on his leg. "Is that - " She twisted her head up and back to look up at him, her eyes glossy and impossibly wide. He couldn't take his eyes off her parted lips. "Is that for me?"

Dave licked his lips and said, "This has been very instructive."

It was kind of an asshole thing to say, but she was so drunk and they worked together, partners more often than not, and he couldn't fuck this up, not when he knew so many of her secrets.

"Oh, Jesusfuck," she said, twisting away from him. "I'm sorry. I'm drunk and horny and I'm not thinking and - "

"Sh, Emily, it's okay," Dave said quickly. "Come on." He pulled her off the dance floor, glancing over his shoulder, but Morgan was kissing the pretty girl and not paying attention and Garcia and Kevin were too wrapped up in each other to notice.

There was water on the table; he poured her a glass. She took it in both hands and drank it without resistance. The song switched to something slower but with the same heavy backbeat that made Dave glad they weren't dancing anymore. He wasn't sure he could be the voice of reason much longer.

He looked at Emily and ended up chuckling. The vodka was hitting him too, pretty hard, and he was tempted by the same honesty that had been dogging her all night. "God, I'm horny, too," he said and grinned when her eyes widened and she wrapped her hands around the glass. "It's not just you. We both drank a helluva lot."

Emily smiled tentatively and then giggled. Dave poured himself a glass of water and noted absently that his vision was fuzzy around the edges. He thought about putting on his reading glasses and then decided that wasn't going to help.

"It's okay?" she asked.

He shrugged. "It's okay with me." Any other time, any other woman, he'd say _let's go home and fuck_, but he wasn't so pickled that he thought that would go here. He took a sip of water. "We're adults with adrenaline-rush jobs and lousy relationship potential." He looked at her over his glass of water. "I'm going home and jerking off," he said, enjoying the candidness between them, "and you're going home and doing your thing, and we'll laugh about this on Monday."

He put Emily in a cab - she argued, of course, but he wasn't going to risk her walking home from the Metro station, even if she did carry a gun - and picked up the tab.

"Where's Prentiss?" Morgan asked, girl in tow as he tried to push a couple of bills into Dave's hand.

"Sent her home," Dave told him. "With instructions to drink a lot of water and take an aspirin. It's good advice. You should do the same."

"I'll get around to it," Morgan said, winking at his date and clapping Dave on the shoulder.

The move definitely had a notion of judgment to it and Dave had passed. It was good to know Morgan was still had Emily's back, but it rankled a little.

He took another cab all the way out to his own house and did exactly what he told Emily he would. The last thing he thought before he closed his eyes was that he really needed to get Emily Prentiss a boyfriend.

* * *

 

Over the past 30-odd years of his career, Dave had accumulated a fat Rolodex of contacts. You never knew when a case or a book would require the knowledge of a blowfish preparation expert. He separated by gender, which cut the number of possibles by two-thirds. He justified the assumption by reasoning that if Emily was bi, she hadn't mentioned it and wouldn't appreciate him making random wild guesses about her sex life. Then again, considering the previous night's conversation, maybe she wouldn't mind so terribly. Either way, it would make finding a match more complex and there was no harm at starting with the low-hanging fruit.

Next, he pulled out everyone who was married - he might not have been the paragon of faithfulness in his own marriages but he never deliberately set out to cheat and he wasn't about to create that situation for anyone else. There were a few people in there who had passed on, and Dave moved them aside in a special pile to archive later. He knocked out anyone not on the East Coast and given his special knowledge of Emily's past, pulled out a few who prayed more than they thought. There were still a fair number of guys in his stack so he went through more slowly, trying to think who would be a good match. A few of them weren't smart enough to keep up with her, so he figured the fair thing to do was to exclude them now.

Andrew Stivers. He was based in Quantico and Dave had taught his interrogation class a good dozen years ago. He hadn't seen Drew in a while and remembered him as a good drinking buddy. Fully aware that Emily would kill him if she knew what Dave was up to, he punched in Drew's number and waited for the other agent to pick up.

"Agent Stivers."

"Drew. It's Dave Rossi."

"Dave! I haven't seen you since you came back to the BAU. How're you doing?"

"I'm good," Dave told him, which was, for the most part, the truth. "Hey, look. There's someone I want you to meet...."

* * *

 

Dave was in early Monday morning, hiding out in his office until Emily came in, laden with messenger bag and raincoat. He waited until she'd settled in and then jogged down to the bullpen. His timing was perfect - he intercepted her approach to the kitchenette.

"Good morning," he said to her, blocking her path to the coffee.

The look she gave him was, at best, uncharitable. "'Morning," she said. She opened her mouth again like she wanted to say something else, but wasn't sure what.

"You want to go get a cup of coffee?" he asked. "I'm buying."

"Oh, well," she said. "If you're buying." She dodged a look back over his right shoulder at the coffee pot as he herded her out of the BAU.

"You know, for someone who keeps insisting I pay for things, you don't actually let me follow through very much," he said conversationally.

Emily groaned. "Could we talk about this after the coffee?" she asked. "Which, by the way, did the cafeteria coffee suddenly go gourmet or is this just a veiled attempt to discuss what happened Friday night?"

"I'm meeting a friend," Dave told her. "I thought you'd like to come along."

The sideways glance she gave him was nothing short of completely suspicious.

"I don't even know what to make of that," she said.

Dave shook his head. "Just a friend," he said. "Just coffee."

"I'm liking this less and less," Emily muttered.

The cafeteria was busy and Dave paid for both of them with a twenty. The cashier rolled her eyes at him.

"Thanks," Emily said, cup already against her mouth. "You know the coffee upstairs is free, right?"

Drew was at a table next to a window, skimming the _Post_ and sipping at his own cup. "This way," Dave said, walking toward Drew. Emily followed in his wake.

Drew spotted them as they approached and stood up. "Dave," he greeted them heartily. "How are you?"

"I'm good," Dave said. "Emily, this is Andrew Stivers. Drew, this is Emily Prentiss. She's a profiler in the BAU."

"Emily, nice to meet you," Drew said, doing a bangup job of being both professional and charming. He shook her hand and gestured to the other chairs at the table. "Sit down, please."

"Drew's in Counterterrorism," Dave told Emily.

"Oh, really?" Emily asked immediately. "Do you work with Jordan Todd?"

"I know Agent Todd by reputation, mostly," Drew said. "She's not on my team, but I know she's our top communications liaison. How do you know her?"

"We had her on loan for a little while," Emily said. "She was great, did excellent work with me in the field."

"That's good to hear," Drew said. "Carry that counterterrorism standard with pride!"

Emily laughed and Dave smiled. This was working out exactly as he'd hoped.

* * *

 

"So, I guess the question is," Emily said when they were back in the elevator, "did you already give him my number, or is he going to email me later with some lame excuse to ask for it?"

"I just introduced you," Dave told her. "If he emails you later...." He trailed off deliberately and shrugged.

Emily rolled her eyes at him and waited.

"I didn't give him your number," Dave assured her. "If he wants it, he has to get it from you himself."

"Thank goodness for small favors," Emily muttered. "Dave. You don't need to play matchmaker for me. If this is about the other night - oh, God, this is about the other night."

"Look," Dave said, turning to face her. Her eyes were dark with skepticism and a little sadness, but he couldn't see any embarrassment on her face. He'd seen that the other night, a red flush that spattered her cheeks and slipped down her neck. "If you want me to step off, you are perfectly within your rights. But you're not going to meet nice guys in this job, and I think I know you pretty well. I'm not going to set you up with someone I don't think is worthy of you."

Emily sighed, her eyes fluttering closed and she dropped her chin to her chest. "God," she said. "This is what it's come to." She looked up at him. "You know, I wish I could say, _I don't need a guy_, or at least, _I don't need you to find me a guy_, but you're right. All right. If he emails, I'll answer. I won't promise anything else, okay?"

"You don't need a guy," Dave said, because she had long since proven that she was capable and amazing all on her own. "But if you want one? You should go for it. Any guy you want to spend your time with is a lucky dog." _And if he forgets it_, Dave didn't say because he knew she wouldn't appreciate it, _I will remind him_.

The elevator doors opened on their floor and Dave put his hand on the frame to hold them open.

Emily stepped out, shaking her head, and Dave followed. "All right," she said. "But if this guy 'accidentally' acquires my high school yearbook photo? It all comes down on you."

* * *

 

Dave was already in bed on Saturday night when his phone rang. He was used to calls coming in at - he checked the clock on his nightstand - 12:30, but he was surprised to see Emily's name and not JJ's on the readout.

"Emily?" he said in lieu of greeting.

"Your buddy Drew just dropped me off," she said. "We went to dinner and saw a movie. You happy?"

"Are you?" he asked, smiling.

"Yeah," Emily said after a beat. "Yeah, I had a good time."

"Then yeah," he said. "I'm happy."

* * *

 

Mid-morning on Monday, someone dropped a huge bouquet of flowers off at Emily's desk.

Dave watched from the walkway as she checked the card and smiled. She glanced up at him and he lifted an eyebrow in query, and when she nodded, he winked and went back in his office. He knew Drew would be a good match. He was still congratulating himself when Aaron walked in.

"Is Emily seeing Drew Stivers?" he asked.

"I heard they went out this weekend," Dave said casually. "Something I should know?"

Dave had long known that Aaron Hotchner was the biggest gossip in the BAU, if not the entire FBI, but this was pretty fast, even for him. "This has you written all over it," Aaron said. "Did you set them up?"

"Jesus, Aaron," Dave said. "Are you afraid Emily won't be able to concentrate on her work?"

"Of course not," Aaron said, dropping into the seat across from Dave's desk. "I'm concerned that you're doing something...unwise."

"If I was going to do something unwise," Dave said dryly, "I would have asked her out myself."

Aaron nodded and lifted his eyebrows. "So," he said. "You two are still just friends, then."

"Yeah," Dave said. "Friends." The word felt odd in his mouth and he glanced up at Aaron. "It's okay to be friends, right?" he said. "You and I are friends."

"Don't make me worry about you," Aaron said, standing up.

Dave rolled his eyes. "I'm not going to date her, Aaron. Get off my back."

Aaron paused in the doorway. "You never got anyone written up for _dating_, Dave."

* * *

 

Drew Stivers lasted about five weeks and then Dave got another midnight phone call from Emily.

"What happened?" he asked.

"It was going too fast," she admitted with a sigh. In the pause, he heard her take a sip of something, swallow, and the very faint clink of glass. He'd bet it was a wine glass, set back on a table or shelf. She liked whites with dinner, because she often ordered fish, but he thought tonight it should be red, something to stain her lips and washes away her regrets. Dave might be a little bit of a romantic. "I mean, he said he wanted a family someday, and I do, too, but then he started talking about whether I wanted to switch units when I got married, or pregnant, or if I wanted to leave the FBI, and I just...JJ didn't, and he didn't really seem to understand that. I'm not - I'm not ready to leave, and I didn't think he should expect that I would, that something might happen that won't. Does that make sense?"

"I'm sorry," Dave said. "I thought maybe you guys would work out."

"He was a nice guy," Emily said. "A really nice guy. And it was nice to get flowers and be taken out and treated like a real girl."

Dave chuckled. "Emily, no one would ever mistake you for anything other than a real girl. Even if they don't say so."

She laughed a little. "Yeah, I guess," she said. "I just didn't realize that I missed it."

"Are you telling me you wouldn't mind trying again?" Dave asked. He'd reassembled his Roladex, but there was still a small stack of cards tucked in the front of his desk drawer.

"Yeah," Emily said after a moment. "Yeah, I guess I am."

"Okay, then," Dave said. "Let's see what we can do."

* * *

 

"Seriously?" Emily asked when Dave opened the door. She handed him a bottle of wine - a nice pinot grigio, he noted, looking at the label - and held up two glasses, her fingers wrapped around the stems. "You thought a lawyer was a good idea?"

Dave opened the door wider and stepped aside to let her in. "He works for the Senate Judiciary Committee," he said. "And he wanted a date for the Gold Cup. It's no fun to go to a steeplechase alone."

"I hate politics," Emily said, sauntering into the foyer. "If it weren't for the horses, I would've died of boredom in the first twenty minutes. Are you and my mother ganging up on me?"

"No more lawyers," Dave promised, holding up his free hand in supplication. "Let me grab a corkscrew."

He led the way to the kitchen and found a corkscrew in short order. Emily set the glasses on his island and perched on the nearest stool. She crossed her legs and let one foot swing idly. His eyes had traveled from her bright heels with a chiffon ribbon knotted above the ankle, to her knee, below the hem of her skirt, before he realized what he was doing. _Just looking_, he reminded himself. That was all he was doing.

Emily didn't seem to notice. She was looking around at his kitchen, noting the cabinets and utensils, his cast iron pots and the mason jars sitting on the far counter. "He seemed like a nice enough guy," she said quietly. "I just couldn't stand the thought of spending any more time with him than I already had."

"Don't worry about it," Dave told her. "His loss is my gain. You want to come sit down?"

"Yes," Emily said, uncrossing her legs and sliding off the stool. "These shoes are killing me."

Dave took her to the greatroom and offered her a seat on the couch. She sat down, arranging her skirt over her knees, and reached down to untie her left shoe. Dave set her wineglass on the end table next to her and sat down in his big chair. "So maybe I'm going about this the wrong way," he said, taking a sip of the wine as she discarded one shoe and started on the next one. "You should tell me what you want. Then I know what I'm looking for."

"For starters, someone who thinks sneakers are the best invention ever," Emily said, apparently running into a problem with the ribbon on her other shoe.

"Never mind," she said, folding to the frustration. "I need wine." She sat up and reached for her wine, turning the glass in her hands for a moment before lifting it in salute. "To all the guys who are right for someone who isn't me." She took a sip without waiting for him and sighed. "Maybe I'm just expecting too much," she said. "I mean, being in love is supposed to be about compromise, right?"

"In a relationship, you compromise on actions and decisions," Dave said. "You don't compromise on who you're with." He set his glass aside and stood up. "You do that, you end up paying a lot of alimony." He kicked the ottoman over in Emily's direction and sat down on it. She shook her head as he leaned down and curved his hand around her ankle. He could feel her pulse in the hollow as he set her foot on his knee.

"I don't know how you did it," she said, shaking her head. "I think if I had a marriage fall apart, I would crawl into a cave and never date again." She winced and covered her face with the hand not holding the wine glass. "I'm sorry," she said. "That was an awful thing to say."

"It's not awful," Dave said, examining the muddled knot of chiffon. "It's what smart people would do. Me? I guess I'm just in love with the idea of being in love. I'm not sure I believe it. But I like the idea."

"You have a lot of faith," Emily said. "You don't have to do that," she added as he went to work on the knot.

"It's the least I can do for setting you up with a _lawyer_ he teased her, glancing up from the knot. Her cheeks are a little pink but she doesn't look terribly upset and he's glad. She hasn't said a single thing worth being upset about.

She laughed. "Okay, it's not that he's a lawyer," she admitted. "It was the politics thing. And a lot of lawyers play politics. He just...does it more than most."

"But less than some," Dave points out. The knot gave and he unlaced the shoe and eased it off her foot. She didn't have small feet, and it sort of fit her. He put the flat of his hand against the bottom of her foot to measure.

"What are you doing?" she asked, taking another sip of wine.

"Wondering how you ever manage to stick your foot in your mouth when it's - what are you, a size nine?" he mused.

"Hey!" Emily pulled her foot back and kicked him lightly in the knee, but she was laughing and so he was he. "There are plenty of people with bigger feet than mine." And then, as if to make her point, she propped her foot up on his knee and kicked the other one up to cross over it.

Dave wrapped both hands around her ankles and squeezed gently. "How do you feel about doctors?" he asked.

* * *

 

"I don't know how I feel about this," Emily said, walking back to her desk. Her hips swayed more than usual, Dave thought, watching, and he wished she hadn't decided to start this up again at work.

"What's the matter?" Morgan asked, looking up from the report he was reading. Dave was pretty sure they'd gotten him an office of his own, but he was in the bullpen sitting at his old desk.

"Rossi wants to set me up with his doctor," Emily said. "And I just don't know that I want to date a guy who knows more about Rossi than I do."

"Yeah," Morgan said. "I get you. I mean, what if he wants to share? I know there's privilege and all, but what if you guys get married?"

"Seriously," Emily said. "I don't know that I could have sex with a guy who's had his hand - "

"He's an ophthalmologist," Dave cut in. "He's my eye doctor. Not a proctologist."

Emily tapped her swizzle stick against the lip of her cup and leaned forward to put the end of it in her mouth. Dave sighed in frustration. She was dead set on the idea that Ray had some sort of intimate knowledge of his body and wouldn't let up. Also, she was wearing the red top that was just a little too low to be professional and she'd taken off her jacket.

"Eh, sounds kind of sketchy," Morgan agreed. "You think _dilate his pupils_ is some sort of euphemism?"

"Could be," Emily said thoughtfully. "I mean, what if he wants to tell me about Rossi's prescription? I'm not sure that I'm ready for that kind of information."

Rossi shook his head and headed for the safety of his office. He could hear Emily and Derek laughing behind him.

* * *

 

Dave hesitated before setting her up with one of the partners of the firm that published his books. Graham lived in New York and there was no way Emily was leaving Virginia, but he was about ten years older, smart, well-read, and liked traveling.

The emails took off fairly quickly and Emily was absorbed with her blackberry whenever Dave saw her. After a month, he realized she was playing brickbreaker and raised an eyebrow.

"Three strikes," Emily said. "Tacoma, Columbus, and the arsonist in the middle of nowhere." They were all cases that had interrupted weekends and, clearly, Emily's plans.

Dave nodded. "Serial killers are so inconsiderate with their timing," he said.

Emily grinned and didn't seem too upset, and when he got home, Dave thumbed through his dwindling stack of possible suitors to look for someone worthy of Emily.

* * *

 

"Your friend was great in bed," Emily told him over the phone.

Dave looked the clock. 1:30 shone at him in LED red. "It's 1:30," he said, thinking, _and you called to tell me you slept with the guy?_ And then it hit him. "Where are you?"

"My place," Emily said. "He just left. He thought I was asleep. Well, I was, but he sort of sucked at stealthy and I didn't want to be that woman who makes him feel like he has to stay when he clearly doesn't want to."

Dave processed this. On one hand, it's not as if he hadn't been guilty of the same behavior many times over. On the other, he'd vouched for this guy and it made him angry that he'd done it to Emily. "Maybe he...." _Don't make excuses for him_ some little part of his brain that sounded an awful lot like his Nonna said. "Maybe he's just an asshole," he finished lamely. "I'm sorry, Em."

"It's okay," she said. "I mean, it's not like I haven't done it myself now and again. It's just...I'm sorry, I shouldn't have woken you up."

"You can call me any time," Dave told her, meaning it. "Anyway, it's his loss. He's totally missing out on the morning sex."

Emily laughed but it sounded a little airy and sad. "Morning sex is great," she said. "And pancakes. Pancakes are awesome."

"Come over tomorrow," Dave said impulsively. "I'll make you pancakes."

"Oh, you don't have to do that," Emily said. "I don't need pancakes. I mean, I can make my own pancakes. Or there's IHOP. Really, it's the morning sex I'm pissed about."

Dave laughed. "That I can't give you," he said. "But hey, at least tonight was good while it lasted?"

"Yeah," Emily said sounding less enthused than she had earlier. "He was good."

"Did he go down on you?" Dave asked without thinking. He winced, but Emily was laughing in his ear and didn't seem upset at all.

"No," she said. "But he made me come twice. And I didn't even have to get completely smashed."

"There's something to be said for small favors," Dave said, and licked his lips. _He_ would have gone down on Emily, for as long as she wanted, until she'd come as many times as she wanted. "What do you mean you didn't have to get completely smashed?"

"Oh," Emily said vaguely. "Remember back when we were at the bar? I, um, you know how women are supposed to be able to bring themselves to orgasm by squeezing their legs together? I kind of field-tested that theory."

"You...." There weren't words for this kind of thing and Dave was so hard and so achy that he wasn't going to get back to sleep until he took care of his erection.

"Yeah," Emily said, and this time she didn't apologize or prevaricate or back off. This time she challenged him. "Once when we were dancing and once in the taxi. They weren't very good orgasms, but they took the edge off until I got home and found my vibrator."

All the air in the room seemed to be crowding for space in Dave's throat and he didn't know how to have this conversation with Emily without fucking everything up. His vision was shimmering with desire and it wasn't even a conscious decision to just let himself fall into her.

"But you got off on the vibrator," Dave said, hardly daring to breathe.

"Yeah," Emily said. "Couple times."

"What did you think about?" Dave ran his hand over his erection in his flannel pajama bottoms.

"Mmm. Dancing. You." She seemed to know he was fishing and didn't seem to care.

"You thought about me?" He liked that, wanted her to think about him when she brought herself off.

"Yeah," she said and it sounded like she was smiling. "Did you think about me?"

"Yeah," Dave answered, taking himself in hand through his pajamas. He didn't want this to go too fast, to go away before he had a chance to enjoy it. "Was that okay?"

"Yeah," Emily said, her voice pitched up. "Yeah, that makes me - I like that."

"You're beautiful, you know," Dave said. "And I thought about you all pressed up against me and dancing like you wanted me to take you to bed."

Emily laughed a little. "Maybe I did want you to take me to bed," she said. "I could feel you, when we were dancing."

"Yeah?" he asked, moving his hand down to cradle his balls. "Was that okay, too?"

"That made me really wet," she whispered. "Knowing I made you so hard."

"I wanted to touch you," he said. "Right there in front of everyone. Run my hands up your body and pinch your nipples, and slide down your pants. What kind of underwear were you wearing that night? Do you remember?"

"Of course I do," she said. "They were navy blue. Cotton. They had this little lace trim around the top. They were so wet when I took them off, Dave."

"That's when you used your vibrator?" he asked.

"Mmmhmm." She was touching herself now, Dave was sure of it.

"Are you using your vibrator now, Emily?"

She chuffed a laugh. "You would hear it, Dave."

"Turn it on. I want you to use it."

Emily didn't say anything but Dave heard every rustle and shift on the other end of the line until finally the other noises subsided and a gentle buzz came through the line.

"It's on," Emily said. "What do you want me to do with it?"

"What are you wearing?" he countered.

She laughed. "A t-shirt."

"Nothing else?" he asked, to make sure.

"Nothing else," she assured him.

"Take it off," he told her.

There was a rustle and a rush and then Emily said, "It's off."

Dave closed his eyes and imagined her sprawled out naked on an unmade bed. "Your right shoulder," he said. "The muscle that always goes tense on you. Put it there."

"Rossi," she protested.

"That's where I would start touching you," he said. "Right there where your shoulder meets your neck. I would put my hand there and push on that muscle with my thumb. Push 'til the knot gives way and you fall back against me."

The intake of her breath is sharp and the noise gets louder, comes closer to the receiver. "I didn't know," she murmured. "I mean, I didn't know that you knew...."

"You didn't know I knew so much about your body?" Dave asked her.

She sighs, a little voice to it. "What would you do to my body next?" she asked.

"Right now?" he answered. "I would run my hand over your collarbone, slide it around front, and I'd kiss your neck and your shoulder, and maybe, if you let me, I'd use my teeth and leave a mark."

The hum of the vibrator grew louder and Emily sighed a shivery little noise. "Tell me you're hard," she murmured. "Tell me you'd be pressing up against my back, so I could feel you."

"Don't worry," Dave said, closing his eyes and sliding his hand inside his pants. "You would feel me. I would make sure you would feel me."

Emily's intake of breath is sharp and Dave imagines her mouth around his dick and swallows a growl. It'll be over before it's begun if he does whatever the hell he wants.

"Now what?" Emily demanded.

"Did he touch your breasts?" Dave asked, careful not to use his name. "Did you like it?"

"I don't want to talk about him," Emily said. "I - they're sensitive, I guess. I want you to be gentle."

"I can do that," Dave assured her. "Go on, run your vibrator down between them. Then underneath." She wanted him to be gentle. The other guy had been too rough, maybe too firm, or maybe too something else. "Put your fingers in your mouth," he said.

"What?" she asked breathlessly.

"Your index finger, your middle finger, and your thumb," he told her. "Put them in your mouth. Lick them. Get them wet." He waited until he thought he heard her, waited until he couldn't wait anymore and said, "Hold your breast the way you want me to hold it and rub your nipple with your fingers. The way you want me to put my mouth on it."

"Oh, _God_, Rossi," Emily moaned, and Dave felt light-headed, like he was going to come, and stilled his own hand. "What about the vibrator?"

"What about it?" he asked, trying to remember where he'd told her to put it last - under her breasts.

"Where do I put it?"

"Where do you need it most right now?"

She laughed a little desperately and said, "Between my legs."

Dave licked his lips and let her words linger through the connection. "Okay," he said finally. "You can put it between your legs. Just the tip. Press it against your special little place...you know where," he said when she said his name. "Just there for now."

"Are you trying to kill me?" she asked breathlessly.

"I'm trying to give you a good orgasm," he said, and _fuck_ those words felt great in his mouth. She seemed to think so, too.

"You always do," she said, and he couldn't ask her what she meant. He _couldn't_.

"I need you to use your fingers again," he told her, pulling his hand out of his pajama pants and concentrating entirely on getting her off. "I need you to touch yourself, lower, and tell me if you're wet."

"Fuck, Rossi," Emily drawled. "I don't need to touch myself for that. I've been wet since I called you."

"Two fingers, Emily," he told her. "You have to put two fingers inside before I'll let you fuck yourself with the vibrator."

"I won't have to fuck myself with the vibrator," she told him, not quite as matter-of-factly as she was trying to sound. "I'm gonna come without it."

"Is that what you want?" he asked. "Do you want to come on your fingers?"

"I want to come on you," she said, her breath and voice straining. "I want to come on your mouth and your cock and your fingers and, oh, God. Dave, please."

"Tell me what you need," he said, because he felt as desperate for her to come as she sounded, and it wasn't like he could give her any of the things she'd just asked for.

"I need you to keep talking to me," she gasped. "I need you to tell me what you'd do to me. Do you want to fuck me, Rossi? Would you do that for me?"

"Hell, yes. I'd do anything you wanted," he confessed. "I'd lick your pussy all night long, I'd fuck you, I'd make you come around me, and the next morning, I'd start all over. Put that vibrator inside yourself," he said. "Pretend it's my cock making you come."

"I don't think it's big enough," Emily said. "I felt you, remember. I've been thinking about it since that night."

"Then put your fingers in beside it," Dave told her, flattered despite having no idea what size vibrator she was using. "I want to hear you come, Emily. I want you to say my name."

"Dave," she said, following with a throaty little whimper. She didn't often use his first name - she seemed to prefer the way his family name rolled off her tongue. "Dave, I've...I've wanted this."

"Keep going," he whispered, his voice rougher than usual. He cleared his throat but that didn't seem to help.

He could hear her breath pick up, the sharp gasps leading to rich groans, and then she was crying out, his name echoing through the phone connection, and dying into a whispered litany.

"Emily?" he asked after a moment. He was still hard, straining, he couldn't come yet, not until he knew she was satisfied. "Did you come, sweetheart?"

She laughed, amazing and helpless and powerful all at once. "Oh my God, Rossi," she said. "Oh, my God, I can't believe you just had to ask me that." She laughed again and he waited, moving his hand to his erection and rubbing it slowly. "Yes," she said when he didn't respond. "Yes, I had an incredible, amazing orgasm, and I'm, wow, I'm still - " She broke off and laughed a little again. He wished she was beside him in bed, because he loved the way she couldn't stop laughing after that orgasm. "Did you?"

"Not yet," he said, and wondered if maybe she'd expected him to get off on listening to her. He certainly could have if he'd let himself.

"Dave," she said. "C'mon. We're doing this together, right?"

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah. I just wanted to make sure - "

"Haven't you been touching yourself?" she asked, her voice low and sweet, the airy laughter shunted aside. "Are you touching yourself now?"

"Yeah," he said, twisting his wrist to pull himself out of his pajamas, give himself more room.

"What do you want?" she asked. "I told you so much about me...do you like to be on top? Do you like to do it from behind? Do you want me to blow you?"

"Oh, God, Em," he choked out, because those weren't words he expected from her.

"C'mon, Rossi," she said, teasing. "You had to be jerking off to some fantasy. Was that it? You want me to suck your dick? I'm good at it, you know," she added, and he groaned. Of course she was. He let go of himself and fumbled in the drawer of the nightstand to find something to wet his hand. "It makes me feel powerful," she whispered. "Knowing I could have you under my control, right in the palm of my hand."

"God, Emily," he gasped. There was lubricant in the drawer and he thumbed open the cap and squeezed some into his palm. That felt better when he closed his hand around his cock again, slick and easy, a little too cool, still, but that wouldn't last long. "I wouldn't be able to take my eyes off you."

"What part makes you come?" she asked, and he can picture her tilting her head to the side. "When I lick you up and down? When I play with the head? Hold your balls? Oh, God, Rossi, I'm blushing. When I suck you all the way into my mouth?"

Dave moved his hand faster and faster, and he wanted to come, wanted it to happen soon, now, without words. "When you pull off and ride me," he managed. "When you fuck yourself on me, that's when." He imagined her blush, and her guiding him into her, and he heard her voice but couldn't make out what she was saying because he was coming, his pulse pounding in his ears and his vision fizzing behind his blinking eyes like the way old UHF channels failed on rainy days.

His breath came heavy and harsh and he turned away from the phone so he wasn't doing it in her ear. After a minute he heard her say, "Hey," and he turned back.

"Hey," he replied. "You okay?"

"Yeah," she said. "Good. You?"

"That felt great," he said truthfully. He hadn't shared an orgasm with another person in too long, and that it was Emily was comfortable, happy, safe. "Thank you."

She laughed a little, again. "Thank _you_," she said.

And just like that, the air went awkward.

"I don't want to hang up," Dave confessed, trying to break up the weird silence.

"It's okay," Emily said. "I don't either. But it's after three. And I'm falling asleep."

She didn't sound like she was falling asleep, but _Dave_ was falling asleep, so he said, "This was good," and hoped she agreed. "I'll see you soon."

"Okay," she said. "Good night, Rossi."

"Sweet dreams, Emily," he answered. There was a hesitation and he waited to see if she had something else to say, but then the call disconnected. He set the phone on his nightstand and closed the open drawer. He should have grabbed tissues before he came, but he hadn't, so he cleaned himself as best he could. Sleep was dragging him down deep, and he'd deal with the rest in the morning.

* * *

 

Dave picked up his phone countless times the next day - looked at his call history, opened the previous evening's call with Emily, noted the duration, 112 minutes - and put it back down again. He had to call, he owed it to her, but he'd never been so conflicted about a sexual encounter.

They'd crossed a line, he and Emily. It was a line they'd danced close to before, eyed - smudged a little, even - but never stepped over.

And the worst part was, Dave didn't know if they were still on that other side or if they'd stepped back when they hung up at quarter past three. He'd half-expected Emily to show up at his door demanding pancakes but she didn't appear.

The thing was, and he knew this as well as he knew the feel of his own hand, was that this - whatever "this" was - wasn't over. It couldn't be over, because he hadn't touched her, hadn't ever kissed her, hadn't pushed into her body and let himself fall into her. They couldn't move past it because _that_ particular line was still in front of them.

It wasn't a one-night stand. It never could be between them. There had been too much build-up, too much past, and too much future still left. Giving in once didn't necessarily mean never giving in again, and whether he called this giving in or not, it would be a worthless definition unless Emily agreed.

It had been like this with Emma. He'd never asked, she never would have said yes, they would never have gone anywhere near that far, but he had always felt that sense of potential, a sense of inevitability, until it was over, gone in the space of a phone call. He doesn't want this to be over.

Emily reminded him a lot of Emma - dark hair and smiling eyes, an iron resolve, and a firm conviction that David Rossi was not nearly as impressive as he pretended to be. The potential was there, the inevitability. He doesn't want this to be over.

Finally, he dialed her phone around dinner time and breathed a tentative sigh of relief when it went straight to voicemail.

"Emily, it's Dave," he said. "I...wanted to see how you were doing. I'm sorry I missed you. We'll talk at work tomorrow." He hung up and cursed. He hadn't wanted to have that conversation, but now that he'd left the message, it seemed even more necessary - and he didn't actually mean to have it at work the next day.

She hadn't returned his call by the time the sun had set, so he went on a run, using his legs to pound out his frustration. He was sweaty and still pissed off at himself when he was done, and even more so when he looked at his phone and realized he'd missed her callback. She hadn't left a message and it was getting on 10pm, so Dave promised himself he'd talk to her the next day and went upstairs.

* * *

 

Dave got in early the next morning, intent on arriving before Emily and bringing her good coffee, the stuff from home. He was going to ask her to dinner, he'd decided. Dinner, so they could talk, decide where to take this, whether to take it, give them a chance to say what they both wanted.

He made it as far as the elevator, and then heard his name called.

"David Rossi! I have not seen you in a _dog's_ age!"

"Brian Doyle! How've you been?" Brian Doyle was African-American, six foot four, and rooted for the Yankees, the fucker. Last Dave had heard, he'd taken the job in New York that Morgan had turned down. "'Scuse me for not shaking," he said, gesturing with the coffee cups, "What are you doing down here? I heard you were up in the City."

"Apparently there's not enough paperwork up there for me," Brian said. "Brought me down here to coordinate narcotic stings. I split my time."

"Well, it's good to have you back," Dave said. "We should grab a drink sometime."

As Brian started to agree, the elevator dinged behind them and Emily's voice rang over Dave's shoulder. "Well, look what the cat dragged in." She sauntered up beside him and Dave's breath caught when he looked at her.

A day hadn't passed since Dave rejoined the BAU that he hadn't found Emily Prentiss attractive. But today her voice was the voice in his ear, urging him to touch himself, laughing at her own orgasm, whispering goodnight. She was beautiful, he thought, momentarily distracted by memory. She offered him a tight smile and a toss of her head and then offered her hand to Brian.

"Emily Prentiss," she said. "You must be one of Dave's friends."

"Brian Doyle," Brian said, taking her hand. Dave did not like the look on his face. It was open, friendly, intrigued. He _liked_ her. "You must be one of those badass BAU agents Dave likes to brag on."

Emily laughed, her Ambassador's Daughter laugh, as Dave thought of it, not the snickersnort he'd heard from her so often. "Dave's a sweet-talker," she said, but he heard the iron under her voice. "He hasn't told me about you, though."

_Motherfucker_, Dave thought. _She's flirting with him._

"You want to grab some coffee with me?" Brian asked, pointing a thumb at the elevator door. "I was just on my way down. I can tell you everything you never wanted to know about Brian Doyle."

"Sure," Emily said. She spared a glance back at Dave. "Tell JJ to page me if there's a case," she said, and then she was walking Brian toward the elevator.

"Dave, I'll give you a call about that drink!" Brian called, and before he turned away, he gave Dave a grin and that significant glance in Emily's direction that was some kind of thank you.

And Dave nodded, standing there with two cups of coffee, hating himself, just a little.

* * *

 

Dave dumped the coffee in the trash in his office, travel mugs and all, and sat at his desk, frowning absently at the photos and memorabilia there. He bounced the end of a pen against his blotter and tried to breathe through the temper tantrum he wanted to have.

Emily was clearly pissed at him. It was hardly an unusual occurrence, though it usually came and went easily. He should have called her earlier. He knew that. This level of fury didn't seem proportionate, though. He hadn't even had a chance to speak to her properly, not with Brian there.

And that was the other thing that chafed. Emily didn't give herself away easily. She'd given every one of the guys he'd set her up with a fair chance and yeah, she was confident and sexual, and he'd known that she'd slept with a few of them, but Saturday night had been....

Dave had spent a lifetime and made a fortune observing and predicting human behavior. He knew a lot about women and he knew a lot about Emily and he would have bet a fair portion of that fortune that Saturday night had been intimate in a way she allowed herself to have rarely, if at all. It felt trite to throw around romantic notions like _connection_ and _inevitable_ but he knew Saturday night had meant something to her.

In a way, her current behavior confirmed it. She certainly hadn't been so angry at the blowfish prep chef who'd snuck out on Satuday night. And there was another punch in the gut. She'd gone from sleeping with that guy to - _call a spade a spade_, he told himself - having phone sex with him, to flirting with Brian Doyle, as if they were all the same to her.

And he _knew_ they weren't.

"Hey," Hotch said at his doorway.

"What?" Dave snapped.

Aaron's eyebrows lifted. "Who pissed in your Cheerios this morning?" he asked, stepping inside and closing the door. He sat down in the chair across from Dave's desk and waited for an answer.

"Either Brian Doyle," Dave spat out. "Or Emily Prentiss."

"Brian Doyle is back in town?" Aaron asked. "Wait. You set up Brian Doyle with Emily?"

"No, I did not," Dave told him. "They set themselves up."

"Ahh," Aaron said, nodding and sitting back in the chair. "Without you. This must make you feel awfully...extraneous."

Dave closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He opened his eyes again and prepared to confess. "The thing is," he said. "Emily and I have been talking a lot. Because I set her up with Drew Stivers."

"And six or seven guys after that," Hotch added.

"Right, well." Dave glanced out his window. He couldn't see much of the bullpen, but he could see the door. He made up his mind to keep seeing the door until Emily got back.

"So...this matchmaking thing has finally bitten you in the ass?" Aaron asked.

"You don't have to be so smug about it," Dave snapped.

"Well, since Emily's not here," Aaron said, getting to his feet. "Somebody has to be." He walked over to the door and put his hand on the knob. "If you don't want Emily dating him," he said matter-of-factly, "tell her. Just remember. She carries a gun." And then he was gone.

* * *

 

Dave sulked until lunch, ignoring the paperwork in his inbox, mostly to get back at Aaron, and then skipped down the stairs to the bullpen as Emily pulled her wallet out of her purse and headed for the doors.

He managed to catch the elevator door right as it started to close.

"Hi," he said, getting in the elevator with her.

"Hi," she said, with a dry "fuck you" clear between the "H" and the "i".

Dave almost smiled - started to smile, even - and then realized that inaudible "fuck you" was directed _at_ him, not offered for his entertainment. "Look," he started.

"Oh, oh, wait! Hold the door!"

Emily put her hand out, stopping the door from closing on them, and Reid scrambled into the elevator.

"Are you guys getting lunch?" he asked. "I usually bring my lunch but the supermarket was out of the kind of bread I like and they said they were getting more in today if I wanted to stop in, so I figured I'd see what the cafeteria had. What's good down there?"

"I'm getting a salad," Emily said. "A chef salad, I think, with ranch dressing on the side. The low-fat stuff. I usually get Italian but," she said with an exaggerated roll of her eyes, "it's been giving me heartburn lately. What supermarket do you go to?"

Dave tilted his head against the wall and closed his eyes.

* * *

 

12:30 every day they were in town. At 12:30, Emily would go get a salad from the cafeteria and bring it back up to the office. Sometimes she would eat in JJ's office, sometimes in the bullpen, but this was the first time in observed history that she sat down in the cafeteria and discussed bread and grocery store preferences with Spencer Reid.

It was sufficiently painful that Dave almost missed his chance when Reid got up to throw his trash away. One minute he was dedicating every possible brain cell to profiling his roast beef sandwich, and the next, he was alone at the table with Emily who was studiously piling hard-boiled egg white and bacon bits onto a soggy piece of lettuce.

"Emily," he said to get her attention. She glanced up at him and then back to her salad. "Can we have dinner tonight? I want to talk about - " He glanced at Reid who was approaching the table again.

"I've got plans," she said.

"Already?" he asked, which caused Reid's eyebrow to go up in question.

"Already what?" Reid asked, sitting back down.

"My mom's in town," Emily said, closing the lid on her salad container. "It's already 1:30. We should be getting back upstairs."

"Oh, wow, you're right," Reid said, peering at his own watch. "I kind of like going to the cafeteria. We should do this more often."

Emily grinned, the first really pleased look Dave had seen from her all day and said, "I'm sure Rossi will put it on his calendar."

* * *

 

They pulled a case the next day, before Dave managed to corner Emily. He spent most of the trip in the precinct, drinking awful coffee and doing press conferences because of course the unsub had issues with women in authority and they needed an aggressive male face on the matter. Emily and Derek spent their time running from crime scene to crime scene as the unsub spiraled and by the time they boarded the plane and Emily and JJ holed up in a corner, Dave knew better than to bother her.

They landed some time between Thursday and Friday and Hotch announced that he wouldn't see any of them until Monday. That was enough for Dave to keep his face out of the office, but that also meant three days he couldn't reach Emily. She let her phone go to voicemail and didn't return his calls, whether he made them to her home phone, her cell, or her work blackberry. He could give her shit for not answering her work phone, but that would only emphasize the problems associated with having inappropriate feelings for people you worked with, so for once in his life, Dave bit his tongue.

On Monday, Dave resorted to email. It was lunchtime and Emily was out with Brian Doyle. He had just managed to get out, "Emily, I know you're upset with me but I need you to give me a chance and listen to what I have to say," when he hit something by accident - enter, he thought, but all he was trying to do was go down a line - when the email sent itself off into the ether, without his permission.

He cursed and banged his fist on the desk, and then realized there might be a more productive way to handle the problem.

"Garcia," he said, banging into her office without knocking. Kevin was there, eating Spaghetti-O's out of a can, and for the billionth time, he wondered what it was about that guy that Garcia liked so much, but he didn't have time for that. "I need your help," he said, instead. "Is it possible to unsend an email?"

"Yes, I mean, I can do that if I get to it before the recipient opens it," she said. "Do you need me to - ?"

"The last email sent from my computer," he said. "Please."

"I'm uh, I'm going to be - " Kevin made some vague hand gestures and took his Spaghetti-O's and got out of Dodge.

"Okay," Garcia said. "The one sent to Prentiss at - "

"Yes," Dave interrupted her. "Is it too late?"

"No, no, I - there we go. I've got it." Garcia looked over her shoulder at him while he breathed a sigh of relief. "Sir?"

"Thank you," Dave said sincerely. "I'm sorry I...came running in here like that."

"It's okay," Garcia said immediately, letting her chair spin to face him. "It's fine, it happens. If, um, if you want to keep that from happening again? You should probably leave the To field blank while you're writing the email. It won't send without a recipient and if you press something by accident, it will prompt you to list someone and you can back out. Or, if you just forgot the name, you can put it in then."

Dave nodded. "Thanks," he said. "That's a good idea."

"Sir? If you don't mind?" Garcia folded her hands together. "Do you mind if I offer one more piece of advice?"

Dave sat down in the nearest chair. "Hit me," he invited. Technology sucked and there was a 50/50 chance he'd forget it as soon as he left, but if it was that other fifty, it might come in useful.

"Girls don't want emails," Garcia said quickly. "Girls want flowers. Or chocolate. Or comic books. I mean, you know, standard romantic things. They're standard for a reason."

"What are you talking about?" Dave asked, but he didn't actually think he was fooling her.

"Emily," Garcia said. "I mean, I know you guys are fighting and I know you're in love with her. Everyone knows you're in love with her. You," she added, warming to her topic, "are possibly the only person who doesn't know you're in love with her, actually. But it's really obvious to the rest of us. And the thing is, we're all actually really rooting for you. Except Morgan."

"Why not Morgan?" Dave asked, because that was the only response he could summon from that jumble of information.

Garcia's lower lip trembled for a moment, and she got that caught look on her face, the one she got whenever they wanted her to tell them bad news. "He just doesn't want Emily to get hurt, sir."

"What about the rest of you?" Dave asked, and he knew the aggressive edge in his voice wasn't helping this conversation at all, but he couldn't grind it out, either. "Aren't you concerned with Emily getting hurt?"

"Well, well, yes," Garcia stammered. "But life is pain, sir, and I don't think she could be safer than when she's with you."

Dave narrowed his eyes at her. "Why with me?"

"Well, because you love her," Garcia said, rolling her eyes as if he's being silly. "And because you make her _happy_."

"The only people I've ever made happy are divorce lawyers," Dave said, remembering when he said the same thing to Hotch. "I've been married three times. I've been divorced three times. Why on Earth would any of you think that I could pull that off, no matter how much you think I'm infatuated with Emily?"

"Um, well, first of all, I didn't say infatuated," Garcia corrected. "You don't go around setting up people you're infatuated with, because you're trying to make them happy and you think they'd be happy with someone else. Can I ask you a question, sir?"

Dave blinked at her. He had trouble processing Garcia most of the time but today, right now, every word she said seemed to rip right through him, leaving warmth and pain in its wake. He didn't want to hear more, wasn't sure he could take it, and wasn't even sure what it was that was hurting so badly. He didn't want to say yes to her and couldn't say no. Finally he said, "Shoot."

"Did they make you happy?" she asked. "Your wives, I mean. Really happy. Like you didn't need anything else. You could just kind of....be? And it would be okay?"

Dave found himself shaking his head before he formed an actual answer. "Penelope," he said, trying to let her down easy. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"I know you don't," Garcia said, and yeah, that was probably just exactly what he expected from this conversation. "But don't you want that for Emily?"

Dave opened his mouth and all the tension and anger bled out of him. "Yes," he said, lost in the enormity of what that might possibly mean. "Yes, of course."

Garcia bit her lip. "Don't you want that for you?"

It had never occurred to him that what he had been doing all these months was trying to make Emily happy. It had never occurred to him to try to make the women he'd married happy, either. Not really. He'd just wanted to give them what they asked for and be granted the same courtesy. "I think," he said slowly. "At least, I _thought_...that wasn't something I could have."

"Oh, sir," Garcia said. "It's not up to you. It's up to the people who love you."

He glanced up at Penelope Garcia, red hair in rag curls, pink lipstick, and a purple fuzzy...thing...in her hair. "How did you get so smart?" he asked her, using the arms of the chair as leverage to push himself upright. His legs felt like maybe they wouldn't hold him, but of course they did.

"Oh," Garcia said, rolling her eyes at him. "Mysteries of the universe. They are not for mere mortals to unravel."

Dave smiled. "Thank you," he said. "I owe you one, Penelope Garcia."

"I'll put it on your tab," she told him. "Now, are the correct words, Go get 'er, tiger?"

Dave held up a finger but realized it was a lost cause. "Give me some time," he conceded. "I pissed her off pretty bad."

Garcia gave him a warning look. "Well, chop chop," she said. "If you let her stew on it, you'll wind up in a worse pickle than you started out. Shoo, shoo! Go forth and spread love."

Dave hesitated in the doorway. "And Morgan?"

"I'll take care of him," Garcia assured him. "He's all bark and no bite anyway."

"I won't tell him you said that," Dave told her and winked as he closed the door behind him. The hallway where the tech labs were located were white and clean, with people scurrying past, and they felt bright with possibility. It should have been comforting, but as he took a deep breath, he realized the knot in his stomach was only tying itself tighter.

 

* * *

 

"I need to talk to you for a minute," Dave said, taking his usual seat across from Aaron's desk.

"What's going on?" Aaron asked, immediately attuned to Dave's mood.

"I'm going to do something unwise," Dave announced.

Aaron's eyes crinkled a little at the corners and his eyebrows rose. "I don't remember you ever offering such fair warning before," he commented. "What's the occasion?"

Dave took a deep breath. "It's about Emily," he said. "I haven't said anything to her yet. I don't know how she's going to take it. But." He held up both hands. "I don't know, Aaron. I tried. I just - I have to see if she'll give it a chance. Give _me_ a chance," he corrected himself. "I just figured you should know, since you'll be the one cleaning it up if it goes badly."

"Well, that's big of you," Aaron said dryly. "I think you're growing as a person."

Dave rolled his eyes. "Fuck you," he said without heat and Aaron grinned - actually smiled widely enough to show his dimples. Dave's heart ached in his chest, and he thought that he'd take any kind of mocking to see his friend smile like that these days.

"You know what this conversation is missing?" Aaron asked, leaning back and letting his chair swivel back and forth slightly. Dave raised his eyebrows and waited. "A declaration of undying love and commitment, overblown threats to whoever stands in your way, and a couple of slamming doors."

"Now you're mocking me," Dave said.

"Yeah," said Aaron agreeably. "But these are good things, Dave." He glanced down at his hands. "It seems all I learn anymore is about things I didn't know when I needed to. I'm trying to learn how to be happy. To let what I have be enough. I could have lost Jack, too, and I didn't, and every time I look at him, I think, my life could be that much worse. If you think you would be happy with Emily, and if you think she could be happy with you, then do whatever the hell you need to do to make it happen."

Dave frowned at Aaron's shadowed eyes. He hadn't intended this, to scrape at Aaron's still tender scars. "What if I can't?" he found himself saying quietly. "I don't want to make another woman miserable. Especially not Emily."

Aaron smiled a little. "Do you really think Emily's like any other woman?" he asked. "Is she even close?"

Dave chuffed a laugh he hadn't realized he'd been holding back. "No," he admitted with a shake of his head. "No, she's not."

"Do right by her," Aaron said. "And if you start to feel like you're not, go get help. Whatever humiliation they put you through will be worth it."

Dave stood up and leaned over Aaron's desk, closing his hand around the other man's fist. "Thank you," he said, because there was nothing else.

He'd made it as far as the door before Aaron spoke again.

"You know," he said. "That whole fraternization headache? Is Morgan's problem now. Have fun with that."

 

* * *

 

Dave decided Morgan didn't really need to hear about his intentions until he got some sort of response from Emily herself. So he spent Saturday morning making arrangements and called her around noon.

 

"Hey," he said when she picked up. "I know you're still pissed at me, but can I come over and grovel a lot?"

"I'm going out at 4," she said. "So do what you need to do before then."

It wasn't quite the welcome he was hoping for, but he'd take it.

She opened the door of her townhouse wearing a halter dress with canvas sneakers, a ponytail, and no makeup. "Nice," she said, taking in the flowers and bottle of wine. "I've got to finish getting ready. You can come upstairs with me."

 

It wasn't how he wanted to see her bedroom, but now that he was there, he looked around, drinking in the details. It was very Emily, from the piles of books to the dark red comforter to the spill of tubes and bottles and whatever across the dresser to the shoes all over the floor. She kicked off the sneakers and leaned into the mirror, dabbing at her face with a sponge.

It wasn't how he wanted to start this, either, talking to her back, but he knew he had to take what he could get. "When I came back to the BAU," he said. "I wanted to do it right this time. I wanted to paint over all the mistakes I'd made before, all the bridges I'd burned, all the - damage I'd caused. It should have been pretty easy. Don't piss off Strauss too bad. Solve some cases. Keep my fly zipped."

That earned him a glance over her shoulder. "How's that going?" she asked.

"Not that well, really," he returned. "Because the BAU happens to have an incredible woman who is...ballsy. Sexy. Sweet, when she wants to be. Smart. In a word, amazing. But I was going to keep it zipped. I wasn't going to cause more headaches for Hotch. I wasn't going to let people whisper about her behind her back. I wasn't going to start something I've never been able to finish."

"Yeah?" Emily turned around and leaned back against her dresser. "And then what happened?"

Dave sucked on his bottom lip for a moment. "And we became friends," he admitted. "I've never had a woman as a friend before. Turns out, it's pretty nice."

Emily smiled a little, cupping her hands around her elbows. "Just one of the boys, huh?" she asked.

 

Dave shook his head. "Not to me," he said. "She. You. Were a new perspective. Someone to talk with. Bounce ideas off. A partner." He shrugged helplessly. "I thought it would be enough."

"It wasn't?" she asked quietly.

Dave shook his head. "I couldn't stop thinking about you," he admitted. "I couldn't stop wanting you. So I thought, maybe, if you were happy with someone else, maybe _that_ would be enough."

"Dave," Emily interrupted. "Did you ever stop and put me into this equation? What I wanted?"

"Yeah," Dave said. "I did. You wanted a family. And to be happy. And I didn't know how a guy like me, in his fifties, with three unhappy marriages and no kids, was going to make you happy. Well, make you happy for more than a couple of hours," he added to get her to smile. It didn't work.

Her mouth tightened and she turned her head toward the window, the afternoon sunlight lying in stripes across her cheek. "So what now?" she asked, turning back to face him. "What's your solution to all this?"

"I don't know," he said, standing up. "I didn't set you up with Brian. I just brought you coffee and I was going to ask you to dinner so we could talk about what happened. I want to hold you and kiss you and make love with you, not just hear your voice on the phone. But I don't know how not to fuck this up. I've told a lot of women that I loved them, so that's not enough here." Close in, Emily's eyes were troubled and her lashes are spiky with unshed tears and he really should have thought this out better. "You make me happy," he said, reaching out, and when she didn't pull away, he cradled the side of her face in his hand. "I want the chance to make you happy. That's all I'm asking. Just a chance."

He tucked her hair behind her ear with his other hand and then used it to mirror the first. He tilts her head up and for a split second before he kissed her, he thought, _Yes, this_, and then her mouth was under his, giving under the pressure he applied, pushing back, pushing against him, kissing him back as her fingertips touched his face.

The awkwardness and anger of the past two weeks fell away and it was just them, just him and Emily, pressed together. Why hadn't he just done this from the beginning, he wondered, reveling in the truth of his earlier statement. She made him happy. He was happy now, just kissing her, just holding her. No one between them, nothing rushing them, rules and judgment and history falling by the wayside.

The doorbell interrupted Dave's perfect moment and he lingered, hoping to recapture it, but Emily was pulling away.

"That's Brian," she said, turning away.

"Tell him you can't go," Dave asked. "Tell him there's a case. Tell him you're sick. Stay here with me. Let's talk this out."

Emily shook her head and stepped into a pair of heels next to the dresser. "You can't just come in here, two weeks too late," she said, stripping the elastic band out of her hair, "and tell me you love me and expect me to fall at your feet." She looked back at him. "I do love you, Dave. But you have to do better."

 

She walked out of the room and Dave followed, down the stairs and into her foyer. She opened the door.

"Hey, gorgeous," Brian Doyle said, bending to kiss her cheek. He saw Dave standing there and straightened. "Dave," he said. He glanced back at Emily. "You have a case?"

Emily shook her head. "Dave was just bringing me a message," she said. She glanced back at him and picked up the purse on her kitchen counter. "You can lock up after yourself, right?" she asked.

"Sure," Dave said because, with Brian standing there, his choices were limited. "I'll do that for you."

"Thanks." Emily nodded at him and pushed Brian out the door ahead of her. She glanced back at Dave before she closed the door and her eyes were the saddest Dave had ever seen them, save in an empty lot on a dreary day. He spread his hand over his goatee and considered his next move.

 

* * *

 

Unfortunately, Dave's next move was pretty much hoping that Brian Doyle was terrible in bed. An hour later, he still hadn't settled on a game plan and he was pretty sure Emily would kill him if she came home and found him still on her couch.

Or else Brian would.

Dave pulled out his phone and called Emily.

"What do you want?" she hissed when she finally answered.

"I just wanted to let you know that I'll be waiting for you here," he said. "And that you probably shouldn't invite Brian in if you don't want to have to explain. Or get me shot."

"Are you - you're still at my house? I...Rossi, what are you pulling, here?"

"I just think that we've had a failure to communicate," Dave said as reasonably as possible. "And since communication has never been my strong suit, and I'm trying to do things better, I think we should address this as soon as possible before it turns into something insurmountable."

"I'll show you something insurmountable," Emily muttered and hung up on him.

Dave assumed it would be a while before she returned, so he put some ice in a bucket he found sitting atop the fridge and added the bottle of wine. He loosened the cork to let it breathe and wandered around her living room.

She had an excellent view of the Washington monument from her picture window and nothing of any worth in her refrigerator. He would have liked to go upstairs, profile the top of the dresser, look at the titles of all the books piled around her room, sit on her bed again. That's where she'd been the night they whispered to each other for two hours and brought themselves off on the phone, and the thought of it sent a streak of fire up his spine. But she was angry enough with him already, so he finally just sat down on the sofa and picked up the last book she'd left on the coffee table.

It was some sort of mystery with a sci-fi setting and she seemed to be about halfway through, judging from the placement of the bookmark. He let the cover fall open against his hand and the pages fluttered down from where she'd stopped reading. He glanced at the words, but it was the card she'd used to mark her place that caught his attention. It was one of his business cards. He removed it carefully, making sure to keep his finger between the pages - if she was angry with him now, he'd be a dead man if he lost her place - and flipped it over.

_Make sure she gets inside safely._

The words were in his handwriting, "inside safely" underlined twice, with Emily's address scrawled beneath. Dave's breath caught. He had given this card to the taxi driver he'd hailed to take Emily home from the bar months ago, when he'd realized that he wanted her in his bed and started his campaign to push her away. That campaign backfired pretty handily, he admitted, and this at least partially explained it. He hadn't thought the cab driver would give the card to Emily - would just throw it away at the end of the night. Clearly she thought enough of it to hang onto.

He hadn't realized she'd known how he felt.

"Fuck," he muttered, replacing the card with a bit more force than necessary and returning the book to the table. "Fucking hell." He rubbed both hands over his face, and that's when he heard her key in the door.

He stood up and ran his hand over his goatee, smoothing down the hairs as if he could smooth down his own ruffled nerves. Emily walked in, her purse over her elbow and a styrofoam clamshell in her hand. She spared a glare at him as she worked her keys out of the door and then kicked it closed behind her. She tossed the keys and her purse on the kitchen counter and put the clamshell in the fridge.

"Thank you for agreeing to talk to me tonight," he started.

"Did I have a choice?" she shot back, tilting the neck of the wine bottle sitting in the bucket on her counter. The vintage must have agreed with her, because she opened a cabinet and took out two glasses.

"You could have let Brian shoot me," Dave said agreeably, because snapping at her would only work to his detriment. "Or done it yourself."

She cast a sideways glance at him. "The night's still young," she warned.

"I'm sorry I dragged you away from your date," he said, then paused. "That's not entirely true. But I am sorry I waited this long to have this discussion."

"What you should be sorry for," Emily told him, pouring the wine, "is for not _asking_ me if I was ready to have this discussion. It's gotta be on your terms. When you don't want to have it. When you do want to have it. Where do I fit in here?"

Dave silently accepted the glass of wine she held out. "You're right," he said. "I should have asked."

Emily kicked off her heels, not looking at him, and picked up her own glass. "I'm tired of fighting," she said. "I wish none of this had ever happened."

"Funny," Dave said. "I thought that's what we were trying to pretend."

Emily sighed. "That doesn't make it not have happened."

Dave held out his arm. "I'm sorry."

For a moment, he was afraid she wouldn't come, that she would walk away, but after a moment, she took halting steps forward and leaned her forehead against his shoulder, wrapping the arm that wasn't holding her wine glass around his neck. "I'm sorry, too," she said, although from where Dave was standing, she had nothing to be sorry for. He bent his head and kissed her hair, smelling her shampoo and brushing his cheek against the silky strands.

Emily sighed, her breath puffing against his shirt. He waited for her to say something but it was almost a full minute before she picked her head up and dropped her arm and said, "Okay. Let's have this discussion." She lifted her glass to her mouth as she stepped away and she skirted the arm of the sofa and curled up in one corner, tucking her feet under her.

"So," Dave started. "I thought I had been doing a pretty good job at hiding how I felt." He picked up Emily's book in his free hand and tilted it so she could see his card sticking out from the pages. "Not so much, I guess."

"I thought I was doing a lousy job at hiding how I felt," Emily replied. "Clearly I overestimated your observational and deductive powers."

"Well," Dave admitted. "We can't all be Doctor Reid."

Emily snorted - no Ambassador's Daughter there - and something about her entire posture relaxed. "God, Rossi, how many times did I throw myself at you?"

"You never threw yourself at me," Dave assured her.

"Um. Yes. I did. And you let me fall on my face." She took a quick drink to hide the flush coloring her face, but not before Dave saw it.

"Emily," he said and stopped. He tried thinking back, to when he most wanted her. That night on the phone. After the Gold Cup when he unknotted her shoe and she put her feet up on his knee. At the bar, when they danced and talked about sex. He shook his head. "I didn't realize," he said. "I thought - " He chuckled. "I thought you were confiding in me and I was trying not to take advantage of you."

She stared at him for a moment and then she shook her head and sighed. "God, Rossi," she said. "_That's_ when you decided to start being a good guy?" She rubbed one hand over her eye. "This is ridiculous," she said. "How do either of us think we're going to have a relationship when we can't say what we want?"

She sounded so distraught and hopeless that Dave had to say something to make her smile. "You were pretty clear about wanting someone to go down on you all night," he reminded her. "You just never said you wanted it to be me."

Emily choked, her cheeks flushing bright.

"Maybe that was my line," Dave said. "Maybe I was supposed to say, 'I want it to be me.'"

"Dave," Emily said, looking anywhere but him and clutching her glass in front of her like a shield.

"Maybe we should practice," he added. "Since we're not very good at it. I could say, 'I want you to give me a blowjob' and you could say...." He waited a beat but she still wasn't looking at him. "It's your line, Emily."

She licked her lower lip thoughtfully and if talking about oral sex hadn't made him hard enough, that little move sure did. "Pancakes."

"Pancakes?" Dave repeated.

"I want pancakes," she said. "For breakfast. Tomorrow. In bed. And a serious discussion about how this is going to work."

"Tomorrow?" he asked, to be sure. "In bed?"

"Tomorrow," she affirmed. "Location to be determined."

"Before or after the morning sex?"

Emily drained her glass of wine and smiled, setting the empty glass aside. "Negotiable. Possibly during."

"During." Dave rubbed his goatee. "Good thing I can multitask."

"I want you to kiss me now," Emily said.

Dave set his glass on the coffee table and stood up. He reached out and took Emily's hand, drawing her to her feet in front of him. "I love you," he said. "And I want to be with you." And then he leaned forward and kissed her.

He felt her palm smooth over his cheek as he tasted her, teasing over her lips before dipping into her mouth. She squeezed his hand and sighed into his mouth.

Dave paused, inhaling the scent of Emily's perfume and brushed his temple against hers. "Brian?" he asked, hating to even have to say the name.

"It's okay," Emily said.

"I didn't try to set you up with him," Dave told her.

"I know," she said. "I asked."

Dave lifted his head and looked down at her. She shrugged. "I just needed to hear it from him," she said, and kissed him again.

He wasn't sure how long they stood there, trading sweet kisses deeper and deeper before Emily laced their fingers together and pressed his hand against her leg. It seemed like a hint that she wanted more, she wanted things to progress, so he slipped one hand in her hair and tilted her head back to deepen the kiss.

She pulled his hand between them, crumpling her dress against their forearms, and dragged his hand up the smooth, silky skin of her thigh to press against her panties.

They were _fucking soaked_ and everything in Dave's head slammed to a jumbled halt. His dick ached against the fly of his jeans, and he wasn't kissing Emily anymore, though they were still close enough that he could taste her breath, and her underwear was cotton, body-hot and wet, and he remembered telling her, instructing her, to use two fingers to check and see, and how ridiculous those instructions must have seemed.

"Emily," he murmured against her lips, and crooked his fingers, tracing the hot curve of her sex through her panties. He managed to hook his fingers in the elastic at her thigh and pull it aside, and then he was touching her, stroking her, dragging his fingers against her most intimate places.

He lifted his head an inch or two and opened his eyes. Emily's eyes were closed and she was biting her lower lip, a flush high on her cheeks. Watching her raptly, he stroked inside, letting his fingers push deep into her. She clenched around him, her head dropping back a little, and he took advantage of the opening to press his mouth against her neck.

"God, Rossi, just like that," she whispered, angling the tilt of her hips toward him and working her hand free of his. That gave him more room to maneuver, more freedom, so he twisted his hand and rubbed an upward path with the side of his thumb until he found her clit.

"I want you to fuck me this time," she said as he made her twist and gasp against him. "No teasing."

"No teasing," he promised, mouthing her collarbone. He was well aware that he was fingering her standing in her living room and they were both completely dressed, even if she was a little ruffled. "I will take you upstairs and fuck you," he murmured in her ear. "Do you want me to lick you first?"

She made a needy sound, not quite a cry and not quite a moan, but some extremely appealing hybrid, and Dave's dick twitched in his jeans. "Yes," she finally answered. "Maybe. I'll let you know when we get there."

"Do you want me to make you come here, first?" he asked, shifting his fingers again. He didn't have a great angle this way, and he was wondering if she'd consent to a little canoodling on the couch before they got serious upstairs.

"You are really taking this communication thing out of hand," Emily said.

"Am I?" Dave asked, stepping away from her hands, which were starting to fiddle with his belt. "Come here." He turned her a quarter turn and sat down on the couch, keeping his hand tucked up beneath her skirt. It was exhilarating to see the fall of her skirt against his forearm, the way she twitched her hips even though she wasn't bare at all. She stepped closer, automatically, following the pull of his body.

He reached out and ran his hand up behind her knee, bending it, drawing it onto the couch next to his hip. She widened around his fingers, and then she balanced her hands on his shoulders and pulled her other leg onto the couch and yes, there it was, the spot he'd been searching for, which made her twist her hips. He ran his other hand up her leg, under the skirt, over the cotton of her panties, on her hip, and palmed her ass.

She shifted up against him and he pulled her in tight, rocking her between his hands until her legs shake around his and she bent her head to his shoulder, pressing her forehead hard against him and hanging on for dear life while she gasped and whimpered his name.

Dave turned his head to brush his temple against her hair and drop air kisses near her cheek. "Shh," he whispered. "I'm going to move my hand now, is that okay?"

Emily bobbed her head against his shoulder so he urged her up a little with the hand cupping her butt and drew his fingers slowly from her body. She shivered as he pulled out and he made another nonsense comfort noise. His fingers were wet, sticky, and brought the scent of her with them. She was sitting on his lap and there wasn't anything within reach, so he did what he would have done if this wasn't their first time, if everything wasn't so tenuous between them, and licked them. _Fucking hell_ she tasted amazing, he thought, and sucked the last bit of her off as she lifted her head and tucked her hair behind her ear. She just looked at him with eyes glazed with lust and then she said,

"So what do you think?"

"I think I need to take you upstairs immediately and go down on you all night long," Dave said, tilting his head to capture her mouth. Her tongue darted against his, into his mouth, tasting herself on him, and he kissed her more deeply. She squirmed on his lap and then he felt her hand press up against his cock, hard in his jeans. His hand twitched, squeezing her ass, which would probably leave bruises - getting knocked around always left her with bruises and he felt bad, he'd meant to be gentler, but he hadn't been prepared for her hand on him.

"All night might be pushing it," she said. "You promised to put this inside me and Dave, it is a lot bigger than my little vibrator."

He kissed her again, teasingly, as she tried to get the button of his pants open. They were too close together, too layered on top of each other to make it easy, though, and he slid his hand off her ass and held her hands in both of his. "Upstairs?" he asked.

"Unless you're going to take me on the couch," she said, and then flushed. "I mean, I guess, sort of, you already did," she added and Dave pulled one of her hands to his mouth to kiss her knuckles.

"I haven't even gotten started with you," he promised, and then kissed her other hand. "Let's go."

She laughed a little, the laugh he remembered from the other night on the phone, and hopped off him, twisting her hand to grab his wrist right back and hauling him off the couch. He followed her, grinning, ridiculously happy, and fiercely determined to stay that way.

Just inside her doorway, he stopped and reeled her back against him, bending his head to kiss her neck and shoulder. "This is lovely," he said, finding the buttons on neck of her dress and thumbing them out of their tiny loops. "And it will be even more lovely on the floor."

"Ha!" Emily said, and then, "Oh," when he pressed his hand against her junction of her shoulder and her neck. "This is how it starts, isn't it?" she asked, leaning into his touch.

"Just like this," he confirmed, and stroked his thumb, circling the knot there, and then pressing straight in. She arched against him, forgetting to catch the bodice of the dress as it fell to her waist. He nudged the muscle harder and admired the curve of her breasts over the strapless bra she was wearing, and she started to relax. "Harder?" he asked, and she giggled.

"Assume the answer to that is always yes," she said, and he laughed against her skin.

He kept at it until she sighed and the muscle let loose, and then he brought his hands down to the zipper on the back of her dress. It went from the middle of her back down to the curve of her ass and he slipped his hands inside to push it off her hips.

"I can feel you," she murmured, leaning her head back on his shoulder and rolling her hips back against him. She shifted as she stepped out of the dress and pushed it away with one foot, and he felt every move against his cock.

Dave spread his hand across her stomach, his fingertips brushing the edge of her panties before he swept it up to cup her breast.

"Gently, right?" he whispered in her ear. He shifted his palm to just take the weight of it and smoothed his thumb lightly over the lace-edged cup. She was tense again, in her shoulders, her stomach, even her rear end, where he could feel everything going on under her cotton panties. "Shh," he soothed.

"No, it's fine," she said, flushing. "It was just - "

"Shh," he said again, pressing a kiss to the side of her face. "We'll do gentle for now." He unhooked the bra with his other hand and caught the pretty thing when it fell away from her body. Her breasts were gorgeous, pale and pear-shaped, tipped in pink and he had to remind himself to go slowly. He stroked his fingers underneath them, feeling their weight against the back of his hand while he spanned her ribcage. Emily shifted against him with a sigh that sounded happy, so he turned his hands, cupping both breasts, holding them, enjoying the softness of her skin, the way they filled his hands, the way her nipples were starting to stiffen. He pressed a kiss to her shoulder and curved one thumb around the shape.

"How is this?" he asked. "Feel all right?"

"Rossi," Emily said and he enjoyed the slightly desperate rasp in her voice. "Yes. It's - more, please."

"More like this?" he asked, stroking his thumb from her side to the areola and back. He did it a second time, letting his thumb brush her nipple lightly, and she arched against him. "You _are_ sensitive," he said. "Let's try this on the bed."

She turned on her toes and pressed herself up against him, her breasts flattening against his chest. He lowered his hands to scoop under her ass as she kissed him, and he walked her back toward the bed, trying not to step on any of the delicate clothes he'd cast aside. Her hands were on his belt again, and he let her pull it open and tug on the top button of his fly.

"Take these off," she demanded, her words slightly slurred by his lower lip between hers.

He lowered the zipper carefully and left his pants open while he unbuttoned his shirt. He wanted to feel her against his chest and he was willing to let her wait a little bit while he did that.

True to form, Emily didn't quite see it that way. With his pants open, she worked her hand inside and was stroking him through his shorts. Ordinarily, he'd be flattered by how anxious she was to get her hands on him, but he was trying to make this about her and she clearly wasn't cooperating.

"Emily," he said, giving up and pulling both shirts over his head as she worked him. "Come here," he cupped his hands around her hips and sat down on the bed, boosting her onto his lap. She pushed him flat, and kissed him, kneeling over him for far too short a time, and then she slid off and away, and Dave only had a second to wonder when he'd stopped being in charge before he sat up to see where she was.

That part almost killed him - Emily was on her knees on the floor between his legs, looking pretty stymied that the bed was too high for her to suck him off from that position. Still, _Emily on her knees_ and his brain wasn't getting off that one any time soon. The rest of him was another story.

"Too low," she said, a touch of red on her cheeks as she stood up and looked down at him. "Scoot back."

"Emily." He reached for her, closing one of his hands around hers and tugging her around to sit on the bed next to him. "We don't have to do everything tonight," he reminded her. She blinked at him, hurt, and he sighed in frustration. He didn't know why they were so out of sync, and he wished he could make it like they were on a case, when it went back and forth easily between them and they almost seemed to know what each other was thinking.

"I just," she said, her frustration equally apparent in her voice. "I thought this was all stuff you wanted to do. I mean, we talked about it...right?"

Dave inhaled, and now he thought he understood. "Of course it is," he said. "And we're going to do all of it. I promise, everything you can think of. Twice. But we don't have to do it all tonight. I'm going to be here tomorrow, remember? And the day after that, and the day after that. There's going to be pancakes and morning sex, and some very deep and important intellectual discussion that may or may not happen while I'm eating you out. But Em, I am not going anywhere."

Emily touched his face, first her fingertips, then her palm, and she bit her lip, a gamut of emotions flickering in her eyes. Dave turned his face just enough to kiss the heel of her hand, and then she was hugging him. It was awkward, almost ridiculously so, with Emily kneeling on the bed with her breasts pressed against his arm and her cheek pressed against his. He shifted, ignoring the disarray of his jeans and boxers pushed open, and wrapped his arm around her waist, spreading his hand over the small of her back.

"Could we just slow down?" he asked when she backed away and ducked her head. He let the hand on her back slip around to her breast and he added, "I was in the middle of something, and I'd like to get back to it."

Emily laughed and squared her shoulders back, pushing into his hand. "You're doing it again," she said. "You're making decisions without asking."

"You interrupted," he shot back, pressing his thumb up softly against her nipple. "If you want to argue, wait until your turn." And then he bent his head to taste her, to take her nipple in his mouth, suck lightly, and try not to give her beardburn on the underside of her breast.

"But if I wait," Emily said, gasping on the last word and sliding her fingers into the hair at the back of his head and pulling him closer, "by the time it's my turn, I won't remember what I - oh. Oh, Dave, do that again."

He laughed at her, demonstrating her self-fulfilling prophesy, and moved to the other breast. She was holding them for him now, and he closed his hands over hers, stroking his fingers over hers and taking what she offered.

Emily was kneeling anyway, on the bed, and his hands were free to touch her as he liked, so he did, letting them roam down her legs and back up, tucking around them, and bringing her over his lap. He wrapped both arms around her back, steadying her, keeping her secure as he leaned her back and mouthed her breasts.

She sighed his name, her hair cascading over his hands and arms, and he pulled her in tight. She bent her knees, sinking down onto him and Mary, mother of Jesus, he was _fucked_. His cock, half uncovered and half still caught in his boxers pressed up hard against those little cotton panties she was wearing and Dave could feel her heat, her wetness, even the soft shape of her underneath and this was the kind of grinding they used to do under the boardwalk at Coney Island, and this is how "accidents" happened and he remembered whispering, or being whispered to, _it's safe, it's safe, you still have your underwear on_.

He lifted Emily, just a little, turning them both, and dumping her on her back on the bed, following her down. He moved down to her stomach, teasing her navel with his tongue, before pushing himself up. He did let himself slide against her once more, simulating what they'd be doing soon, and then he backed off, dragging her panties down her legs as he did so.

Emily tucked her knees up to kick off her underwear, and hesitated there, as if she was going to pick now to start being shy. Dave kissed the inside of one knee, then the other, and slid his hand between them, opening her legs as he kissed his way down the other leg.

"Dave." Emily's hand on his face distracted him before her voice did, and he looked up, having traveled no further than mid-thigh. "This can wait, too," she said, and he sat up a little, to argue, because this was the very first thing she'd ever told him she wanted, and he wanted to give it to her. Her fingertips on his lips stopped him, mostly because they were dipping into his mouth, demanding kisses and attention, but her words caught him too. "You're going to go down on me tomorrow, remember?" she said, letting him tease the pads of her fingers with his teeth and tongue. "While we're having our very deep and important conversation?"

"I said we could do everything twice," he reminded her, lifting his head, because she seemed fairly certain.

She smiled, her eyes twinkling, and it lit up the room. "I know," she said. "But I've been thinking about you inside me for so long now, and we're so close, and I don't want to wait any longer for you."

The thing about Emily Prentiss was that every time Dave thought he had control of the situation, she'd go and knock him ass over teakettle.

So he backed up and stood next to the bed, and dug around in his back pocket for his wallet. It was hard to get out with his jeans so loose, but he managed, and then he shucked the jeans and the boxers, and palmed the condom in his wallet before setting it on her bedside table.

Emily was probably on birth control - Dave would bet money on it, but he knew her secret, he knew about the pregnancy and the abortion, and the hell she'd gone through in Italy, and until she looked him in the eye and told him she wanted a baby, he was going to take every precaution to save her from having to make another painful choice.

 

And if that day, those words, ever came, well, he had promised himself that his answer would be, "Yes, of course sweetheart. Whatever you want." He'd had fifty-five years to live his life and he'd done well in some aspects and pretty shitty in others, and maybe it was time to stop thinking so much about himself and start thinking about other people and what they wanted. He thought about what Garcia had said, that if he made Emily happy, she would do the same for him, and it didn't sound ridiculous anymore.

 

So he rolled on the condom and joined Emily on the bed, leaning down to kiss her as he lowered his body to fit against hers. His cock pressed up between her legs, and he waited, braced on one forearm, and running his other hand up and down her side, over the curve of her breast, her waist, her hip, and when she opened to him and brought her knees up on either side, he reached down to steady himself. The tip of his cock rubbed up against her, up against her clit, and the end of the condom tickled her into squirming under him. He pushed in, and he could have done it more slowly, maybe should have said something, told her he loved her, something, but then she was around him and she was hot and slick and then she was kissing him, words muffled against his mouth.

"Emily," he whispered and there she was, all huge eyes and flushed cheeks, and red mouth. Her legs were hooked over his hips and she was tight around him. "You okay?"

"Yeah," she said, her voice soft in a way he wasn't used to. "Yeah, I'm okay."

"I'm going to move," he said. "You'll tell me if I - "

"Dave," she interrupted. He stopped talking and she smiled. "I've wanted you inside me for a long time now, remember?" she said and he couldn't keep his hips from rocking, even if he'd wanted to. "I thought about you that first night I felt you up against me."

"Oh, God, Emily," he groaned, and it was like being on automatic, making love with her in deep, steady strokes as she whispered in his ear.

"Talk to me?" Emily asked, biting her lip immediately after she said it.

Dave brushed a kiss over her lips, soothing where she'd bitten, and smiled at her. "You're going to come around my cock tonight, aren't you?" he asked, twisting his hips a little as he thrust.

"Oh, God, Dave," Emily gasped. "Yes," she said, "yes, just like on the phone. I wanted to feel you sliding all the way inside me and the vibrator was too small, and my fingers weren't enough, and I just wanted you...."

"I should have gotten in my car and come right over here," Dave said, wondering why he hadn't thought of it then. "I should have come over and fucked you and this all would have - " He cut himself off, not wanting to go there, to recriminate while they were making love for the first time. "You had me so turned on, Em, I couldn't think straight. Is this enough for you now?" He was talking nonsense, he knew it, but Emily started bouncing her hips against him and her nipples were hard against his chest.

"Dave, I'm going to come," she said. "Can you? Harder?" Her hands stroked over his ass, and he shifted up a little, giving himself more leverage, a better angle, and it seemed to work for her, too, because then she pulled him up against her hard, into her, and he leaned back a little more so he could work his thumb under her clit. "Dave, Dave," she said quickly, and her eyes were wide. He couldn't lean down to kiss her from that angle, so he gave her a little more pressure with his thumb and lowered his voice for her.

"Come on, Emily," he murmured. "I know you're all turned on and hot. I can feel how slick you are around my dick and I can feel all those muscles inside you hanging on tight." He spread his hand over her hip, speeding up his thumb, and thrust a little harder, a little bit of a longer stroke. She jerked her hips and he almost slipped out, so he pushed in and rocked hard against her, not pulling out, just rocking both their bodies together. "Come for me," he whispered. "Say my name like you did that night. I've been jerking off to the memory of you saying my name when you come and I want to hear it now."

 

Emily cried out, one hand locking around Dave's wrist, immobilizing his hand, and the other pressing up against her own breast, the her palm flat against her nipple. She said his name like a plea, like a sob, like it was the only thing she had to hold on to. She locked down around him and it was tight, it was hot, it was amazing, and the only thing he could process was her voice chanting his name.

She came down hard, like she did on the phone, covering her face and laughing and even though he wanted to linger and listen to her, he needed to come. "Emily," he said to get her attention. "Emily, fuck, you're so hot, you make me so fucking crazy, I need to - Can I - "

And then she pulled him down, pressed her mouth against his, pulled her legs higher, and in the cradle of her body, he let go and came, driving into her in fading motions until they tumbled together in an exhausted heap.

"I love you," he said, kissing her shoulder.

And Emily laughed and kissed him, and he knew he had never had it better.

Fin

* * *

Lyrics to _I Guess I'll Have to Change My Plan_  
Arthur Schwartz &amp; Howard Dietz, 1929

I guess I'll have to change my plan  
I should have realized there'd be another man  
I overlooked that point completely  
Until the big affair began

Before I knew where I was at  
I found myself upon the shelf and that was that  
I tried to reach the moon but when I got there  
All that I could get was the air

My feet are back upon the ground  
I lost the one girl I'd found

I guess I'll have to change my plan  
I should have realized there'd be another man  
Why did I buy those blue pajamas  
Before that big affaire began?

My boiling point is much too low  
For me to try to be a fly Lothario  
I think I'll crawl right back and into my shell  
Dwelling in my personal hell

I'll have to change my plan around  
I lost the one girl I've found.

Yes the one girl I've found.


End file.
